Friday, May 5, 2017
Larry Klayman's Freedom Watch
- We're It Not for the Democrats' Use of The "Race Card" Susan Rice Would Be Indicted and Tried! Trump calls out Rice for refusal to testify to Congress
- President Trump And Vice President Pence Threatened With Death By Leftists Who Must Be Held Accountable. Click to Watch Video
- Roger Stone Has No Credibility! In My Opinion, I Would Not Believe a Word He Says About Sean Hannity or Anything Else! Roger Stone claims Sean Hannity made 'insane effort' to be White House chief of staff
- Time to Turn Iranian Military Facilities Along With NoKo's Into Ash! Iran attempted missile launch from submarine, US officials say
- Report Shows Extent of Obama Administration's Surveillance, Unmaskings. Continue Reading.....
- Trump Must Make It Clear to Abbas That West Bank Belongs to Israel and Not the So Called Palestinians! Trump seeks steps from Abbas to promote peace with Israel
- Freedom Watch's Successful Lawsuits Against Obama's NSA Will Seek Criminal Contempt Resulting From Continued Illegal Spying! Was Trump Right? NSA Sought to 'Unmask' 1,934 Americans in Intelligence Reports
- Salute To Israel On Her 69th Year Of Independence And Rebirth - Click to Watch Video
Cronyism, Corruption, and the Obama White House
May 4, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
One of the points I repeatedly make is that big government breeds corruption for the simple reason that politicians have more power to reward friends and punish enemies.
It’s especially nauseating when big companies learn that they can get in bed with big government in order to obtain unearned wealth with bailouts, subsidies, protectionism, and other examples of cronyism.
And these odious forms of government intervention reduce our living standards by distorting the allocation of labor and capital.
But just as crime is bad for society but good for criminals, it’s also true that cronyism is bad for the economy and good for cronies.
Two professors at the University of the Illinois decided to measure the “value” of cronyism for politically connected companies.
That cronyism is lucrative (I deliberately chose that word rather than “profitable” because money that it legitimately earned is very honorable).
Here are some of the findings.
And here are the officials that they met with.
For what it’s worth, I would be especially suspicious of the meetings with Valerie Jarrett and the three Chiefs of Staff. Those officials are political operatives rather than policy experts, so companies meeting with them were probably looking for favors.
Interestingly, it turns out that it wasn’t a good idea for companies to “invest” a lot of time and effort into cultivating relationships with Democrats.
By the way, there are two very important caveats to share.
This image from the libertarian page on Reddit illustrates why my leftist buddies are naive to think that a bigger government will be a weapon against cronyism.
P.S. We should learn from Estonia on how to limit cronyism.
P.P.S. To close on a humorous note, those with left-wing children may want to get them “Kronies” for their birthdays or Christmas.
One of the points I repeatedly make is that big government breeds corruption for the simple reason that politicians have more power to reward friends and punish enemies.
It’s especially nauseating when big companies learn that they can get in bed with big government in order to obtain unearned wealth with bailouts, subsidies, protectionism, and other examples of cronyism.And these odious forms of government intervention reduce our living standards by distorting the allocation of labor and capital.
But just as crime is bad for society but good for criminals, it’s also true that cronyism is bad for the economy and good for cronies.
Two professors at the University of the Illinois decided to measure the “value” of cronyism for politically connected companies.
Gaining political access can be of significant value for corporations, particularly since governments play an increasingly prominent role in influencing firms. Governments affect economic activities not only through regulations, but also by playing the role of customers, financiers, and partners of firms in the private sector. …Therefore, gaining and maintaining access to influential policymakers can be an important source of competitive advantage… In this paper, we investigate the characteristics of firms with political access as well as the valuation effects of political access for corporations. Using a novel dataset of White House visitor logs, we identify top corporate executives of S&P 1500 firms that have face-to-face meetings with high-level federal government officials. …We match the names of visitors in the White House visitor logs to the names of corporate executives of S&P1500 firms during the period from January 2009 through December 2015. We are able to identify 2,286 meetings between corporate executives and federal government officials at the White House.And what did they find?
That cronyism is lucrative (I deliberately chose that word rather than “profitable” because money that it legitimately earned is very honorable).
Here are some of the findings.
…we find that firms that contributed more to Obama’s presidential election campaigns are more likely to have access to the White House. We also find that firms that spend more on lobbying, firms that receive more government contracts… Second, we find that corporate executives’ meetings with White House officials are followed by significant positive cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). For example, the CAR is about 0.865% during a 51-day window surrounding the meetings (i.e., 10 days before to 40 days after the meetings). We also find that the result is driven mainly by meetings with the President and his top aides.For those interested, here are the companies that had a lot of interaction with the Obama White House.
And here are the officials that they met with.
For what it’s worth, I would be especially suspicious of the meetings with Valerie Jarrett and the three Chiefs of Staff. Those officials are political operatives rather than policy experts, so companies meeting with them were probably looking for favors.
Interestingly, it turns out that it wasn’t a good idea for companies to “invest” a lot of time and effort into cultivating relationships with Democrats.
…we exploit the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the U.S. as a shock to political access. We find that firms with access to the Obama administration experience significantly lower stock returns following the release of the election result than otherwise similar firms. The economic magnitude is nontrivial as well: after controlling for various factors that are likely correlated with firms’ political activities, such as campaign contributions, lobbying expenses, and government contracts, the stocks of firms with access to the Obama administration underperform the stocks of otherwise similar firms by about 80 basis points in the three days immediately following the election.Though I guess you can’t blame the companies. Most observers (including me) expected Hillary to win, so the firms were simply playing the odds (albeit from an amoral perspective).
By the way, there are two very important caveats to share.
- First, we can’t universally assume that corporate executives who met with White House officials were seeking special favors. They may simply have been urging the Obama Administration not to raise taxes or impose new regulations (i.e., honorable forms of lobbying).
- Second, we can’t assume that the bad forms of lobbying have disappeared simply because there’s a Republican in the White House. As we saw during the Bush years, the GOP is more than capable of creating opportunities for unearned wealth by expanding the size and scope government.
This image from the libertarian page on Reddit illustrates why my leftist buddies are naive to think that a bigger government will be a weapon against cronyism.
P.S. We should learn from Estonia on how to limit cronyism.
P.P.S. To close on a humorous note, those with left-wing children may want to get them “Kronies” for their birthdays or Christmas.
An Experimental Design for Mitigating Alzheimer's Disease
James Marusek
Alzheimer's is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, leading to cognitive impairment that severely affects daily living. Alzheimer's is an extremely destructive disease that slowly erodes away life's essence at our very core. Symptoms usually develop slowly and get worse over time, becoming severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. The greatest known risk factor is increasing age, and the majority of people with Alzheimer's are 65 and older. Other age related disease exists including atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, cataracts, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes, and hypertension. In my opinion, it is likely that these diseases share similar pathways and causes........ To Read More......
Thursday, May 4, 2017
The Continuing Revenge of the Laffer Curve
May 3, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
Seven years ago, I wrote about the “Butterfield Effect,” which is a term used to mock clueless journalists.
They don’t realize (or prefer not to acknowledge) that changes in tax rates alter incentives to engage in productive behavior, and this leads to changes in taxable income. Which leads to changes in tax revenue, a relationship known as the Laffer Curve.
Here are some remarkable examples of the Butterfield Effect.
Here are some excerpts from a report by a Connecticut TV station.
Indeed, the story basically admits that the tax increases have backfired because some rich people are fleeing the state, while others have simply decided to earn and/or report less income.
The question is whether politicians are willing to learn any lessons so they can reverse the state’s disastrous economic decline.
But don’t hold your breath. We have an overseas example of the Laffer Curve, and one of the main lessons is that politicians are willing to sacrifice just about everything in the pursuit of power.
Here are some passages from a story in the U.K.-based Times.
If you read the full report, you’ll notice that the head of the Scottish National Party previously had decided not to impose the higher tax rate because revenues would fall (just as receipts dropped in the U.K. when the 50 percent rate was imposed).
But now that there’s an election, she’s decided to resurrect that awful policy, presumably because a sufficient number of Scottish voters are motivated by hate and envy.
This kind of self-destructive behavior (by both politicians and voters) is one of the reasons why I’m not overly optimistic about the future of Scotland if it becomes an independent nation.
P.S. I’m not quite as pessimistic about the future of tax policy in the United States. The success of the Reagan tax cuts is a very powerful example and American voters still have a bit of a libertarian streak. I’m not expecting big tax cuts, to be sure, but at least we’re fighting in the United States over how to cut taxes rather than how to raise them.
Seven years ago, I wrote about the “Butterfield Effect,” which is a term used to mock clueless journalists.
A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison populations were expanding. A number of critics sarcastically explained that crimes rates were falling because bad guys were behind bars and invented the term “Butterfield Effect” to describe the failure of leftists to put 2 + 2 together.Journalists are especially susceptible to silly statements when writing about the real-world impact of tax policy.
They don’t realize (or prefer not to acknowledge) that changes in tax rates alter incentives to engage in productive behavior, and this leads to changes in taxable income. Which leads to changes in tax revenue, a relationship known as the Laffer Curve.
Here are some remarkable examples of the Butterfield Effect.
- A newspaper article that was so blind to the Laffer Curve that it actually included a passage saying, “receipts are falling dramatically short of targets, even though taxes have increased.”
- Another article was entitled, “Few Places to Hide as Taxes Trend Higher Worldwide,” because the reporter apparently was clueless that tax havens were attacked precisely so governments could raise tax burdens.
- In another example of laughable Laffer Curve ignorance, the Washington Post had a story about tax revenues dropping in Detroit “despite some of the highest tax rates in the state.”
- Likewise, another news report had a surprised tone when reporting on the fully predictable news that rich people reported more taxable income when their tax rates were lower.
Here are some excerpts from a report by a Connecticut TV station.
Connecticut’s state budget woes are compounding with collections from the state income tax collapsing, despite two high-end tax hikes in the past six years. …wealthy residents are leaving, and the ones that are staying are making less, or are not taking their profits from the stock market until they see what happens in Washington. …It now looks like expected revenue from the final Income filing will be a whopping $450 million less than had been expected.Reviewing the first sentence, it would be more accurate to replace “despite” with “because.”
Indeed, the story basically admits that the tax increases have backfired because some rich people are fleeing the state, while others have simply decided to earn and/or report less income.
The question is whether politicians are willing to learn any lessons so they can reverse the state’s disastrous economic decline.
But don’t hold your breath. We have an overseas example of the Laffer Curve, and one of the main lessons is that politicians are willing to sacrifice just about everything in the pursuit of power.
Here are some passages from a story in the U.K.-based Times.
The SNP is expected to fight next month’s general election on a commitment to reintroduce a 50p top rate of tax… The rate at present is 45p on any earnings over £150,000. …civil service analysis suggested that introducing a 50p top rate of tax in Scotland could cost the government up to £30 million a year, as the biggest earners could seek to avoid paying the levy by moving their money south of the border.
If you read the full report, you’ll notice that the head of the Scottish National Party previously had decided not to impose the higher tax rate because revenues would fall (just as receipts dropped in the U.K. when the 50 percent rate was imposed).But now that there’s an election, she’s decided to resurrect that awful policy, presumably because a sufficient number of Scottish voters are motivated by hate and envy.
This kind of self-destructive behavior (by both politicians and voters) is one of the reasons why I’m not overly optimistic about the future of Scotland if it becomes an independent nation.
P.S. I’m not quite as pessimistic about the future of tax policy in the United States. The success of the Reagan tax cuts is a very powerful example and American voters still have a bit of a libertarian streak. I’m not expecting big tax cuts, to be sure, but at least we’re fighting in the United States over how to cut taxes rather than how to raise them.
Crimes Against Humanity Are Only For Losers!
By Rich Kozlovich
I originally published this on 9/30/13, but felt Daniel Greenfield's article, "The Dirty Red Secrets of May" inspired me to republish this today to help establish the left has no solid moral foundation. And anyone they condemn is a condemnation of convenience because there's three things the left hates more than anything. Consistency of thought, history and truth when it conflicts with their latest narrative, which may or may not last as long as the current ladies fashion. All parties of the left - including environmental activists - are irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.
We now know that by not using DDT millions have died unnecessarily and yet the greenies, the EU, United Nations authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency continue to stand against its use. It would appear to me that someone is guilty of crimes against humanity. The world court is hot to try people for all sorts of things, but why is it that no one with the authority to charge greenies with these crimes has noticed that a crime against humanity has been committed? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media political-paradigm of the day!
Depending on who you read, the number that have died from malaria alone runs between fifty and one hundred million since 1972. That doesn’t count the many other mosquito borne diseases that are transmitted to an unprotected population. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
They stand against a genetically modified food called Golden Rice, which would prevent five hundred thousand children from going blind each year in Southeast Asia. In Africa they convinced leaders not to let their starving people eat genetically modified corn because it would cause cancer in their people. Untold numbers died. Thousands died and tens of thousands were sickened in South America when they convinced leaders there to eliminate chlorine in the water supplies because they claimed it caused cancer. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
There are those who arrogantly and smugly scoff at the very idea that anything the green movement does can be considered a crime; and if this was sixty, fifty, forty or even thirty years ago society would have agreed with them. Very few actually knew what was really going on and no one listened. We simply didn't know any better because the media kept the truth from society. But we now have the Internet, and that has allowed the evidence of time and science to be made known. We now know that the positions they had taken were not only wrong but evil. Evil because the environmental stands that they have taken have been tested by time; and people are still dying and suffering needlessly because of them, and they know it. Why has no one been charged with crimes against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
They know it! At the heart of the environmental movement they believe that humanity is the planet's greatest disease and must be eliminated. Prince Phillip once said that he would like to be reincarnated as a virus for that purpose. Apparently being detached from reality is a requirement to be a Royal and a greenie. For someone to be aware that they are taking a position that they know will kill untold numbers has to be criminal. Yet they continue to insist on standing their ground on all of their misanthropic positions. How can this not be crimes against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media -political paradigm of the day!
If you don’t want to call these events crimes against humanity, could we at least agree that this certainly represents depraved indifference? That is a crime also, and yet these are the people deciding what pesticides (if any) should be allowed, if genetically modified foods can be grown and sold, if chlorine and fluoride should be allowed in our water supplies, whether we can use fertilizers and herbicides on our fields, what foods we should eat, whether hydroelectric dams can be built and whether oil should be or will be drilled and where.
Does anyone feel any more confident now? Perhaps we can just get a copy of the New York Times to find out how we should feel.
I originally published this on 9/30/13, but felt Daniel Greenfield's article, "The Dirty Red Secrets of May" inspired me to republish this today to help establish the left has no solid moral foundation. And anyone they condemn is a condemnation of convenience because there's three things the left hates more than anything. Consistency of thought, history and truth when it conflicts with their latest narrative, which may or may not last as long as the current ladies fashion. All parties of the left - including environmental activists - are irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.
An article titled; "Universal jurisdiction raises as many problems as it solves", was published by Hussein Ibish on September 28, 2013. He points out;
“Universal jurisdiction arises out of the post-Second World War environment, the first real applications of it being trials by the victors against Nazi and Japanese officials, among others. They created, in effect, a set of ex post facto crimes that were morally unimpeachable but raised significant legal problems. The magnitude of the evil, however, properly offset such qualms and new international legal norms were established.”
However, he states just before this;
“It must also contend with even more knotty moral realities – which are usually ignored in the academic and theoretical conversation on the subject – and multiple examples wherein the greater good may well be served by not pursuing even heinous war criminals for various ethically persuasive reasons.”
In short; war crimes are for losers! Stalin butchered tens of millions of his own people. Why wasn't he tried at Nuremburg? Castro killed as many or more per ratio than even Stalin. Why didn't Britain and Spain attempt to try him at the ICC as hard as they attempted to try Pinochet? Some time back I wrote an article titled; "What Constitutes A Crime Against Humanity?" I think it’s worth republishing now.
__________
Recently I had an interesting conversation with one of my customers who turned out to be an atheist. The conversation started out about how Islam is not a religion of peace (and I don’t care what these idiots in politics say) since their religion requires them not to be moderate. They can kill, rape, steal, lie and do whatever else they like in the name of Islam and its perfectly acceptable. That led to a discussion on the Crusades and the Inquisition. Eventually we came to atheists.
Being an atheist she proclaimed that at least they don’t go around killing people. I looked at her with a smile of incredulity and said…I’m sorry…except for the environmentalists atheists have killed more people than anyone in modern history.
Although under no circumstances should it be construed that I am justifying the atrocities of the Crusades and Inquisition; but Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists and killed far more than all of those combined, and with the exception of Hitler, those they killed were all their own people. Mao deliberately starved thirty six million to death because he needed cash to buy armament. How did he get it? He sold the food these people needed to survive. He said that this may only be the beginning and far more may have to die for him to attain his goals. So much for the “people’s revolution”!
These people committed some of the greatest crimes against humanity every recorded in history, yet Hitler is mostly singled out for that distinction. Why? Not that he didn’t deserve it mind you; but that is the rub isn’t it? Who decides what constitutes a crime against humanity?
Hitler proved that killing 6 million Jews is a crime against humanity because his henchmen were charged, found guilty, and many were executed for carrying out his orders. Joseph Stalin killed fifty million of his own people with the help of (among a host of others) Leonid Brezhnev, who became the leader of the USSR from 1964 till 1982. Neither of which were smeared with the epithet of ‘mass murderer’ or charged with crimes against humanity by any sitting official of any kind anywhere. In point of fact, neither Nixon, Ford or Jimmy Carter seemed to have any problem at all dealing with this mass murderer.
Then we have the modern Stalin apologists who claim that no one killed all those millions of people in Russia, and if millions did die; it wasn't Stalin's fault. But if millions did die, and Stalin did order those deaths; it was because he was trying to save millions more from the maniacs within his government. Accordingly, Stalin and Baria, his chief of the secret police, were in reality the heroes, not the villains, and that all the evidence to the contrary constitutes a conspiracy of lies.
Walter Duranty even received a Pulitzer Prize for writing articles that claimed that Stalin wasn't killing anyone; and everyone in journalism working in Russia knew his work was nothing but lies. A Pulitzer Prize that the New York Times refuses to return ; a Pulitzer Prize the Pulitzer Prize committee, in spite of the fact that it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Duranty was a fraud, refuses to revoke.
Mao Tse Tung killed even more people yet Richard Nixon along with Henry Kissinger sat around like old buddies with Mao and his partner in mass murder Chou En-lai. Apparently you have to lose a war to be a mass murderer; perhaps that explains why no one in the environmental movement has ever been charged with any crime against humanity. The media and the political element will only stand up for what is right when the agenda fits their needs or view of reality - facts notwithstanding. Thomas Sowell made a worthwhile observation regarding the media and this mass murderer saying; "The mainstream media never expressed half the outrage about Mao Zedong as they did about Ronald Reagan. Yet, when it came to killing millions of innocent civilians, even Hitler was an amateur compared to Mao."
Then let's not forget Hollywood's favorite atheist and mass murderer, Fidel Castro. "According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million people in 1960. Put your calculator to it and you’ll see that—per-capita wise--Castro and Che were close on the heels of their heroes and mentors Stain and Mao." These men slaughter men, children and even pregnant women; and yet prominent people today, who should know better, have this to say;
Being an atheist she proclaimed that at least they don’t go around killing people. I looked at her with a smile of incredulity and said…I’m sorry…except for the environmentalists atheists have killed more people than anyone in modern history.
Although under no circumstances should it be construed that I am justifying the atrocities of the Crusades and Inquisition; but Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists and killed far more than all of those combined, and with the exception of Hitler, those they killed were all their own people. Mao deliberately starved thirty six million to death because he needed cash to buy armament. How did he get it? He sold the food these people needed to survive. He said that this may only be the beginning and far more may have to die for him to attain his goals. So much for the “people’s revolution”!
These people committed some of the greatest crimes against humanity every recorded in history, yet Hitler is mostly singled out for that distinction. Why? Not that he didn’t deserve it mind you; but that is the rub isn’t it? Who decides what constitutes a crime against humanity?
Hitler proved that killing 6 million Jews is a crime against humanity because his henchmen were charged, found guilty, and many were executed for carrying out his orders. Joseph Stalin killed fifty million of his own people with the help of (among a host of others) Leonid Brezhnev, who became the leader of the USSR from 1964 till 1982. Neither of which were smeared with the epithet of ‘mass murderer’ or charged with crimes against humanity by any sitting official of any kind anywhere. In point of fact, neither Nixon, Ford or Jimmy Carter seemed to have any problem at all dealing with this mass murderer.
Then we have the modern Stalin apologists who claim that no one killed all those millions of people in Russia, and if millions did die; it wasn't Stalin's fault. But if millions did die, and Stalin did order those deaths; it was because he was trying to save millions more from the maniacs within his government. Accordingly, Stalin and Baria, his chief of the secret police, were in reality the heroes, not the villains, and that all the evidence to the contrary constitutes a conspiracy of lies.
Walter Duranty even received a Pulitzer Prize for writing articles that claimed that Stalin wasn't killing anyone; and everyone in journalism working in Russia knew his work was nothing but lies. A Pulitzer Prize that the New York Times refuses to return ; a Pulitzer Prize the Pulitzer Prize committee, in spite of the fact that it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Duranty was a fraud, refuses to revoke.
Mao Tse Tung killed even more people yet Richard Nixon along with Henry Kissinger sat around like old buddies with Mao and his partner in mass murder Chou En-lai. Apparently you have to lose a war to be a mass murderer; perhaps that explains why no one in the environmental movement has ever been charged with any crime against humanity. The media and the political element will only stand up for what is right when the agenda fits their needs or view of reality - facts notwithstanding. Thomas Sowell made a worthwhile observation regarding the media and this mass murderer saying; "The mainstream media never expressed half the outrage about Mao Zedong as they did about Ronald Reagan. Yet, when it came to killing millions of innocent civilians, even Hitler was an amateur compared to Mao."
Then let's not forget Hollywood's favorite atheist and mass murderer, Fidel Castro. "According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million people in 1960. Put your calculator to it and you’ll see that—per-capita wise--Castro and Che were close on the heels of their heroes and mentors Stain and Mao." These men slaughter men, children and even pregnant women; and yet prominent people today, who should know better, have this to say;
1. Viva Fidel! Viva Che! Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I've ever met." Jesse Jackson
2. Meeting Fidel Castro were the eight most important hours of my life." Steven Spielberg.
3. "Very selfless and moral. One of the world's wisest men." Oliver Stone
4. Cuba's Elvis." Dan Rather
5. “A Dream come true." Supermodel Naomi Campbell
6. "Socialism works. I think Cuba can prove that." Chevy Chase”.
7. "Castro is an extraordinary man. He is warm and understanding and seems extremely humane." Gina Lollobrigida
In 1996 when Castro visited NYC he was called the “The Toast of Manhattan” by Time magazine. Newsweek called him “The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan” discussing the social swirl he had caused. Humberto Fontova wrote an article about this called, Happy Thanksgiving! (From Fidel and Che) about how Fidel is embraced by people that should know better. We are aghast of the 9/11 destruction of the Twin Towers, yet Fidel Castro and Che had planned something just as heinous, if not more so, in 1962.
“Cuban agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving…. the year’s biggest shopping day, for good measure. Thousands of New Yorkers, probably mostly women and children, were to be incinerated and entombed.”
Was he treated as a murderous maniac?
First there was “a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations. After holding court there for a rapt David Rockefeller, along with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas, and Random House’s Harold Evans, Castro flashed over to Mort Zuckerman’s Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of Beltway glitterati, including Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw, and Barbara Walters, all jostled for a photo op, and stood in line for Castro’s autograph. Diane Sawyer was so overcome in the mass-murderer’s presence that she rushed up, broke into a toothy smile, wrapped her arms around Castro, and smooched him warmly on the cheek.”“God Bless you, Fidel,” boomed Pastor Calvin Butts of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church while introducing Castro on another New York visit four years later. The People’s Weekly World described Castro’s visit as such: “The audience which included New York Democratic representatives Charles Rangel enthusiastically greeted the Communist leader with a ten minute standing ovation. Chants of ‘FIDEL!-FIDEL! VIVA-FIDEL!’ resounded from the rafters.”
“Then with Congressperson Maxine Waters looking on in rapture, a beaming Charlie Rangel waddled up to the podium beside the terrorist (and racist) Castro and engulfed him in a mighty bear hug. Castro had to catch his breath, but he smiled and returned the rotund senator’s passionate abrazo.”
“Then with Congressperson Maxine Waters looking on in rapture, a beaming Charlie Rangel waddled up to the podium beside the terrorist (and racist) Castro and engulfed him in a mighty bear hug. Castro had to catch his breath, but he smiled and returned the rotund senator’s passionate abrazo.”
In March of 2011 Humberto Fontova wrote and article entitled, "Women’s History Month and Castro’s Female Victims" wherein he outlines the media's complete contempt for truth, reality and the poor innocents who suffered at his hands. He states; "When Barbara Walters sat quivering alongside Fidel Castro in 1977 cooing: “Fidel Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful.” dozens of Cuban suffragettes suffered in torture chambers within walking distance of the hyperventilating Ms. Walters." He went on to say; "I also apologize for singling out Barbara Walters. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell also had praise for the tryant: “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!”
And what was Casto's reaction to all of this adoration?
“You people are the cream of the crop!” beamed the Stalinist/terrorist to the smiling throng he’d come within a hair of nuking in 1962. “Hear, hear!” chirped the delighted guests, while tinkling their wine glasses in honor of the smirking agent of their near vaporization."
There really isn't any cure for stupid! Then again, perhaps it is just that this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day? Either way.....there really isn't any cure for stupid.
What if one person is deliberately murdered for philosophical reasons, is that a crime against humanity? We know for sure that it takes somewhere between one death and six million deaths to constitute a crime against humanity and it must fit the media-political paradigm of the day. What if tens of millions have been killed as a result of policies pursued by the environmental movement and implemented by governmental authorities? Surely that must be considered a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day?
For those who continue to say there are provisions which allows for DDT use in emergency situations and that DDT wasn’t banned in many areas of Africa; baloney, it is all wall paper.
And what was Casto's reaction to all of this adoration?
“You people are the cream of the crop!” beamed the Stalinist/terrorist to the smiling throng he’d come within a hair of nuking in 1962. “Hear, hear!” chirped the delighted guests, while tinkling their wine glasses in honor of the smirking agent of their near vaporization."
There really isn't any cure for stupid! Then again, perhaps it is just that this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day? Either way.....there really isn't any cure for stupid.
What if one person is deliberately murdered for philosophical reasons, is that a crime against humanity? We know for sure that it takes somewhere between one death and six million deaths to constitute a crime against humanity and it must fit the media-political paradigm of the day. What if tens of millions have been killed as a result of policies pursued by the environmental movement and implemented by governmental authorities? Surely that must be considered a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day?
For those who continue to say there are provisions which allows for DDT use in emergency situations and that DDT wasn’t banned in many areas of Africa; baloney, it is all wall paper.
“Yet African states are still put under pressure to avoid using DDT. This year the EU warned of possible agricultural sanctions against Uganda, Kenya and other countries that defiantly use DDT and vow to continue doing so. An EU official warned the Ugandan authorities that if indoor spraying of DDT meant there was ‘a risk of contamination of the food chain’, then while ‘[it] would not automatically lead to a ban of food products…it will mean that that particular consignment cannot be sent to Europe’ (5). ‘The EU should be saying that DDT is safe and poses no threat to EU consumers’, says Innis. ‘Instead they make either direct or oblique threats about possible trade sanctions. What they’re really saying is, “We’ve benefited from DDT and gotten rid of malaria but you people in Africa cannot do the same”.’
As for those countries that did ban DDT;
“Almost two decades after the country banned the use of DDT, the Government is under pressure to lift the ban as one of the effective ways of controlling the spread of malaria. At the same time, there is pressure on the Government not to lift the ban on the insecticide, which remains banned in many countries in the world. The pressure comes in the wake of the heads of state conference in Abuja, which passed a resolution to put emphasis on and promote the use of indoor residual spraying to help fight the malaria vector.”
The outside pressure is tremendous on these leaders from the green movement.We now know that by not using DDT millions have died unnecessarily and yet the greenies, the EU, United Nations authorities and the Environmental Protection Agency continue to stand against its use. It would appear to me that someone is guilty of crimes against humanity. The world court is hot to try people for all sorts of things, but why is it that no one with the authority to charge greenies with these crimes has noticed that a crime against humanity has been committed? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media political-paradigm of the day!
Depending on who you read, the number that have died from malaria alone runs between fifty and one hundred million since 1972. That doesn’t count the many other mosquito borne diseases that are transmitted to an unprotected population. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
They stand against a genetically modified food called Golden Rice, which would prevent five hundred thousand children from going blind each year in Southeast Asia. In Africa they convinced leaders not to let their starving people eat genetically modified corn because it would cause cancer in their people. Untold numbers died. Thousands died and tens of thousands were sickened in South America when they convinced leaders there to eliminate chlorine in the water supplies because they claimed it caused cancer. Since all of this is a direct result of greenie activities; is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
There are those who arrogantly and smugly scoff at the very idea that anything the green movement does can be considered a crime; and if this was sixty, fifty, forty or even thirty years ago society would have agreed with them. Very few actually knew what was really going on and no one listened. We simply didn't know any better because the media kept the truth from society. But we now have the Internet, and that has allowed the evidence of time and science to be made known. We now know that the positions they had taken were not only wrong but evil. Evil because the environmental stands that they have taken have been tested by time; and people are still dying and suffering needlessly because of them, and they know it. Why has no one been charged with crimes against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media-political paradigm of the day!
They know it! At the heart of the environmental movement they believe that humanity is the planet's greatest disease and must be eliminated. Prince Phillip once said that he would like to be reincarnated as a virus for that purpose. Apparently being detached from reality is a requirement to be a Royal and a greenie. For someone to be aware that they are taking a position that they know will kill untold numbers has to be criminal. Yet they continue to insist on standing their ground on all of their misanthropic positions. How can this not be crimes against humanity? Perhaps this doesn't fit the media -political paradigm of the day!
If you don’t want to call these events crimes against humanity, could we at least agree that this certainly represents depraved indifference? That is a crime also, and yet these are the people deciding what pesticides (if any) should be allowed, if genetically modified foods can be grown and sold, if chlorine and fluoride should be allowed in our water supplies, whether we can use fertilizers and herbicides on our fields, what foods we should eat, whether hydroelectric dams can be built and whether oil should be or will be drilled and where.
Does anyone feel any more confident now? Perhaps we can just get a copy of the New York Times to find out how we should feel.
The Dirty Red Secrets of May
Posted by Daniel Greenfield Wednesday, May 03, 2017 14 Comments @ The Sultan Knish Blog
American leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses. There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.
The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."
Which Americans did Communism inspire? Communists and their fellow travelers. Despite the news stories cheerfully reporting on May Day protesters in the United States waving Soviet flags, there aren't very many Communists in this country. Communism is a demanding mistress. It requires knowing a whole lot, not so much about the real world, but about Communism.
Most leftists are dilettantes. They admired and admire Communism's commitment to murdering millions of people and arguing the esoteric dogmas of the party line. It's this latter that Gornick's New York Times piece bleeds with nostalgia for. She tells us, again and again, that the Communists were wonderfully inspirational because they sat around kitchen tables arguing about ideas.
So did the Nazis. But the New York Times doesn't print fond recollections of debates over whether the Japanese really counted as Aryans and how National Socialism should approach the rights of workers. Nostalgia for the Third Reich is rightly regarded as abominable. And the hobby of those who have a soft spot for its murderous totalitarian ideology.
Curiously, the left never applies this same indictment to its own fondness for Communism. Instead it traffics in nostalgia for Communism's idealism, as if its ideals were any nobler than those of Nazism. But the left believes they were. And how could it not? Communism is just the left taken to its inevitable conclusion. And so the left excuses Communism's excess of enthusiasm for the cause.
Mistakes were made. The mass murder of millions being one of them. Generations of repression being another. Forced abortions, mass starvation, forced labor, slavery, death camps, virulent racism, psychiatric torture, invasion and terrorism being a few others. But their ideals were so idealistic.
Communism didn't inspire Americans, it did inspire the left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the left. When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.
And the vile people are the cultural leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people.
Sound familiar?
The double standard is why Nazi historical revisionism is evil, but Communist historical revisionism gets a wink and a nod. It also makes a mockery of the conviction that the mass murder of Jews for the sake of a totalitarian ideology during the 20th century was a bad thing that we ought to deplore.
The Soviet Union began murdering Jews when the Holocaust was just an evil twinkle in a mad Fuhrer's eye. It went on murdering Jews long after he shot himself in the head. Stalin liked Hitler's Holocaust so much that he tried to plan his own version of it. He would have gotten away with it too if he hadn't died, throwing the Soviet Union and his various malicious plans into chaos with it.
The left doesn't believe that Hitler was bad because he killed Jews. Mass murder isn't a crime in the left's eyes. Just ask Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the gang of monsters whom the left defended in papers just like the New York Times until they had committed the worst of their crimes.
As long as the Hitler-Stalin pact held, leftists vehemently campaigned against war. There were plenty of "Hitler is bad, but" pieces of the sort that they're running about North Korea or Iran. Hitler only became truly irredeemable when he invaded the Soviet Union. And then everyone, except the Trotskyists, decided that Nazi Germany was utterly evil. Leftist fellow travelers went, in the span of days, from protesting "warmongering" and "militarism" to demanding action yesterday.
And that too is another dirty red secret of the left.
It's inconceivable that the New York Times or any paper would run a glowing piece titled, "When Nazis Inspired Americans". No fond recollections from participants in the Madison Square Garden rally. No fond memories of Bund camps. No sugar-coated recollections of how the Thousand Year Reich would create a better world... only to then learn that Hitler wasn't a very nice man.
But "When Communism Inspired Americans" regurgitates the same exact message. And it remains acceptable because the left feels an emotional and intellectual connection with Communists.
That is the ugly truth at the root of our conflict.
Liberalism, the old vintage that actually stood up to Communists, is as dead as the dodo. In its place are smug leftists eager to repeat the same old sins.
Nazis don't get a forum to pour out their romantic nostalgia for attending Hitler rallies. Communists do because the left sympathizes with them. It must offers occasional apologies and disavowals, but the love for a horrifying ideology that was totalitarian all the way down, whose mass murder of millions was not an accident of fate, but was always an integral part of it, tells the truth about the left.
"The party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice," Gornick writes.
Gornick begins with individuals and concludes with the ugly collectivist mass of the party. It is always the party in the end. The individuals are disposable. They are, as Stalin said, statistics.
The rest is tiresome. The same recitations of "We knew nothing". As if the crimes of Communism had been some sort of mystery until Khrushchev admitted them.
And what were the Moscow Trials? What were the decades of reports about abuses and atrocities?
Like Pol Pot's crimes, an outraged left denied it all.
After all the mass murders and crimes have been admitted, the left always returns to this nostalgia. To that emotional linkage to the total commitment to a totalitarian state.
To the party.
This is the left. It returns, like a dog to its vomit, to the dream of the true radicalism of a totalitarian leftist state. It occasionally deals with uncomfortable truths. Circles around them. And then it lapses back into an opium dream of Marxists sitting around a kitchen table and debating which windows to smash first and whom to shoot first.
American leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses. There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.
The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."Which Americans did Communism inspire? Communists and their fellow travelers. Despite the news stories cheerfully reporting on May Day protesters in the United States waving Soviet flags, there aren't very many Communists in this country. Communism is a demanding mistress. It requires knowing a whole lot, not so much about the real world, but about Communism.
Most leftists are dilettantes. They admired and admire Communism's commitment to murdering millions of people and arguing the esoteric dogmas of the party line. It's this latter that Gornick's New York Times piece bleeds with nostalgia for. She tells us, again and again, that the Communists were wonderfully inspirational because they sat around kitchen tables arguing about ideas.
So did the Nazis. But the New York Times doesn't print fond recollections of debates over whether the Japanese really counted as Aryans and how National Socialism should approach the rights of workers. Nostalgia for the Third Reich is rightly regarded as abominable. And the hobby of those who have a soft spot for its murderous totalitarian ideology.
Curiously, the left never applies this same indictment to its own fondness for Communism. Instead it traffics in nostalgia for Communism's idealism, as if its ideals were any nobler than those of Nazism. But the left believes they were. And how could it not? Communism is just the left taken to its inevitable conclusion. And so the left excuses Communism's excess of enthusiasm for the cause.
Mistakes were made. The mass murder of millions being one of them. Generations of repression being another. Forced abortions, mass starvation, forced labor, slavery, death camps, virulent racism, psychiatric torture, invasion and terrorism being a few others. But their ideals were so idealistic.
Communism didn't inspire Americans, it did inspire the left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the left. When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.
And the vile people are the cultural leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people.
Sound familiar?
The double standard is why Nazi historical revisionism is evil, but Communist historical revisionism gets a wink and a nod. It also makes a mockery of the conviction that the mass murder of Jews for the sake of a totalitarian ideology during the 20th century was a bad thing that we ought to deplore.
The left doesn't believe that Hitler was bad because he killed Jews. Mass murder isn't a crime in the left's eyes. Just ask Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of the gang of monsters whom the left defended in papers just like the New York Times until they had committed the worst of their crimes.
As long as the Hitler-Stalin pact held, leftists vehemently campaigned against war. There were plenty of "Hitler is bad, but" pieces of the sort that they're running about North Korea or Iran. Hitler only became truly irredeemable when he invaded the Soviet Union. And then everyone, except the Trotskyists, decided that Nazi Germany was utterly evil. Leftist fellow travelers went, in the span of days, from protesting "warmongering" and "militarism" to demanding action yesterday.
And that too is another dirty red secret of the left.
It's inconceivable that the New York Times or any paper would run a glowing piece titled, "When Nazis Inspired Americans". No fond recollections from participants in the Madison Square Garden rally. No fond memories of Bund camps. No sugar-coated recollections of how the Thousand Year Reich would create a better world... only to then learn that Hitler wasn't a very nice man.
But "When Communism Inspired Americans" regurgitates the same exact message. And it remains acceptable because the left feels an emotional and intellectual connection with Communists.
That is the ugly truth at the root of our conflict.
Liberalism, the old vintage that actually stood up to Communists, is as dead as the dodo. In its place are smug leftists eager to repeat the same old sins.
Nazis don't get a forum to pour out their romantic nostalgia for attending Hitler rallies. Communists do because the left sympathizes with them. It must offers occasional apologies and disavowals, but the love for a horrifying ideology that was totalitarian all the way down, whose mass murder of millions was not an accident of fate, but was always an integral part of it, tells the truth about the left.
"The party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice," Gornick writes.
Gornick begins with individuals and concludes with the ugly collectivist mass of the party. It is always the party in the end. The individuals are disposable. They are, as Stalin said, statistics.
The rest is tiresome. The same recitations of "We knew nothing". As if the crimes of Communism had been some sort of mystery until Khrushchev admitted them.And what were the Moscow Trials? What were the decades of reports about abuses and atrocities?
Like Pol Pot's crimes, an outraged left denied it all.
After all the mass murders and crimes have been admitted, the left always returns to this nostalgia. To that emotional linkage to the total commitment to a totalitarian state.
To the party.
This is the left. It returns, like a dog to its vomit, to the dream of the true radicalism of a totalitarian leftist state. It occasionally deals with uncomfortable truths. Circles around them. And then it lapses back into an opium dream of Marxists sitting around a kitchen table and debating which windows to smash first and whom to shoot first.
Communist Goals For America
By Rich Kozlovich
I felt Daniel Greenfield's article "The Dirty Red Secrets of May" was a good way to once again introduce the Communist Goals For America published in the Congressional Record in 1963.
I felt Daniel Greenfield's article "The Dirty Red Secrets of May" was a good way to once again introduce the Communist Goals For America published in the Congressional Record in 1963.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Life among liberals -- a report from a reader
From Dissecting Leftism
I am surrounded by liberals and people even further left. One woman I know goes around spouting liberal opinions out of nowhere. She will say, for example, “No one can live on the minimum wage. We need to immediately raise it to $10 per hour and then quickly raise it to $15 per hour in stages.
I respond with, “But don’t you listen to the news? McDonald’s and all the other fast food companies are already experimenting with touch tablet ordering to eliminate jobs and lower their cost of doing business.”
She changes the subject with, “…evil corporations.” You can’t have a conversation with a liberal because if you say something to prove them wrong, they immediately change the subject.
Another friend talks incessantly about climate change. When I ask her what she means by climate change, she changes the subject and asks me why I don’t believe in it.
Most of the time when someone asks me if I believe in climate change, I reply, “…of course. The climate is always changing. The planet is always getting hotter or colder, wetter or drier. Just look at its four billion year history.”
They will change the subject and talk about how 97% of all scientists agree on climate change.
When you present hard, cold facts to people of the left, they always change the subject. That is why here in the USA we don’t have any successful liberal talk radio stations (I don’t know about the rest of the world.). To quote Rush Limbaugh, “They can’t sustain a conversation.” If you can’t sustain a conversation, you can’t fill the airtime with talk.
I am surrounded by liberals and people even further left. One woman I know goes around spouting liberal opinions out of nowhere. She will say, for example, “No one can live on the minimum wage. We need to immediately raise it to $10 per hour and then quickly raise it to $15 per hour in stages.
I respond with, “But don’t you listen to the news? McDonald’s and all the other fast food companies are already experimenting with touch tablet ordering to eliminate jobs and lower their cost of doing business.”
She changes the subject with, “…evil corporations.” You can’t have a conversation with a liberal because if you say something to prove them wrong, they immediately change the subject.
Another friend talks incessantly about climate change. When I ask her what she means by climate change, she changes the subject and asks me why I don’t believe in it.
Most of the time when someone asks me if I believe in climate change, I reply, “…of course. The climate is always changing. The planet is always getting hotter or colder, wetter or drier. Just look at its four billion year history.”
They will change the subject and talk about how 97% of all scientists agree on climate change.
When you present hard, cold facts to people of the left, they always change the subject. That is why here in the USA we don’t have any successful liberal talk radio stations (I don’t know about the rest of the world.). To quote Rush Limbaugh, “They can’t sustain a conversation.” If you can’t sustain a conversation, you can’t fill the airtime with talk.
Failed economics of Renewable Energy: The Facts
By 2014 European Union countries had invested approximately €1.1 trillion, €1,100,000,000,000, in large scale Renewable Energy installations.
This has provided a nominal nameplate electrical generating capacity of about 216 Gigawatts, or nominally about ~22% of the total European generation needs of about 1000 Gigawatts.
The actual measured output by 2014 from data supplied by the Renewables Industry has been 38 Gigawatts or 3.8% of Europe’s electricity requirement, at a capacity factor of ~18% overall.
Accounting for capacity factors the capital cost of these Renewable Energy installations has been about €29billion / Gigawatt. That capital cost should be compared with conventional gas-fired electricity generation costing about €1billion / Gigawatt.......To Read More....
Solar Power: An Environmental Disaster
Posted on April 14, 2017 by John Hinderaker
Solar power is expensive, unreliable and environmentally destructive. So it doesn’t come into being through consumer demand; rather, by government fiat or subsidy. The federal government controls the military, so, sadly, our armed forces have been dragged into the government’s alleged fight against “climate change” to a humiliating degree.
The Minnesota National Guard’s facility at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, is a case in point. Yesterday, an array of public officials hailed the opening of a 60-acre swath of solar panels that will produce a pathetic amount of energy, during the daytime and assuming it isn’t cloudy. My colleague Tom Steward has the story at the American Experiment web site: .......To Read More....
Solar power is expensive, unreliable and environmentally destructive. So it doesn’t come into being through consumer demand; rather, by government fiat or subsidy. The federal government controls the military, so, sadly, our armed forces have been dragged into the government’s alleged fight against “climate change” to a humiliating degree.
The Minnesota National Guard’s facility at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, is a case in point. Yesterday, an array of public officials hailed the opening of a 60-acre swath of solar panels that will produce a pathetic amount of energy, during the daytime and assuming it isn’t cloudy. My colleague Tom Steward has the story at the American Experiment web site: .......To Read More....
Feel the Bern: Venezuela death toll hits 29, protesters battle security forces...
After a month of near-daily protests by opponents demanding early general elections, the unpopular leader announced on Monday that he planned to set up the super-body popular assembly with the power to rewrite the constitution. The socialist government said the opposition was promoting street violence and refusing dialogue, so it had no choice but to shake up Venezuela's power structure...... To Read More.....
The leftist-media parallax view
By Patricia McCarthy
And there are his supporters throughout the country, the voters who elected him and, after the ridiculous proverbial hundred days, still support him, love him, and are proud of what he has accomplished so far in the face of monumental opposition, even within his own party.........The parallax is the disconnect between what the leftist media see and what is true. .......Read more
parallax - noun... the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g., through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera.There are decidedly two different views of President Trump among Americans. There are the media, who hate, loathe, despise, and abhor the man and have decided that they will bring him down by any means necessary.
And there are his supporters throughout the country, the voters who elected him and, after the ridiculous proverbial hundred days, still support him, love him, and are proud of what he has accomplished so far in the face of monumental opposition, even within his own party.........The parallax is the disconnect between what the leftist media see and what is true. .......Read more
Why bother voting for Republicans?
Controlling the legislative and executive branches of the federal government means nothing. It’s as if the Democrats were still in charge.
By Brian C. Joondeph May 2, 2017
Once again, congressional Republicans delivered a swift kick to the crotch of their voters, in the form of their proposed budget this week. Congressional big spenders reached a deal Sunday, with a bill over 1,600 pages in length. Almost as long as Obamacare. But at least it's a budget. Last year, Congress had no budget, instead papering over their fiscal irresponsibility via temporary spending measures.
Since this budget is proposed by the Republican Congress, with the expectation of the Republican president signing it into law, one would reasonably expect that the budget represents Republican priorities – funding programs promoted on the campaign trail and cutting or eliminating spending which they campaigned against..........Good to know that leaders of the political party that lost over 1,200 elected seats over the past eight years got much of what they wanted in the budget and are pleased............Read more
Ivanka and Family Show Serious Class In Treatment of Secret Service
There have been a number of detractors in the media who have lambasted Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner’s, roles in the administration of her father, Donald Trump. Of course, there is the obvious rallying cry of decrepit nepotism that has the left in a tizzy, claiming that their tax dollars are now going to support even more of the Trump family tree that they despise. What these leftist agitators are forgetting is that Ivanka Trump is one of the most capable women on the planet, let alone in Washington D.C........To Read More.....
My Take - For those Secret Service agents who protected Clinton - this must be a welcome treat. And as far as I can tell - Obama's family treated the Secret Service agents with respect also. For those still covering the Billarys - my sympathy - for that must be punishment duty. And people wonder why I think Hillary is crazy.
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The Root Cause of Cancer
James A. Marusek
The primary cause of much of the cancer in the U.S. is due to radiation, specifically nuclear radiation. A secondary cancer cause is damage to the body's immune systems. Not all types of radiation are the same. Some forms of radiation are softer and weaker such as electromagnetic radiation, which exists in the form of radio waves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma rays. These soft forms are photons [light waves]. Another type of radiation is harder because it has mass. Nuclear radiation is so named because it is composed of the particles (protons, neutrons) that make up the nucleus of the atom.
So where does this nuclear radiation come from? Most of this exposure is from Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs). GCRs are high-energy charged particles that originate outside our solar system. Cosmic rays are produced when a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and explodes into a brilliant supernova. These stars are generally new short-lived massive blue stars of the spectral type O (20-100 solar masses) or blue-white stars of spectral type B (3-20 solar masses). About 85 percent of GCRs are protons (nuclei of hydrogen atoms), 12 percent alpha particles (helium nuclei) and the remainder are electrons and the nuclei of heavier atoms.
The energy levels of GCRs observed in deep space generally lie in the 100 MeV (million electron volts) to 10 GeV (billion electron volts) range. The higher the energy level of these particles; the greater the speed and thus the ability of the particle to drill down through our atmosphere to the planet's surface. Because most cosmic-ray primaries are strongly influenced by the Earth's magnetic field and the interplanetary magnetic field, most of those detected near the Earth originally had kinetic energies in excess of about 1 GeV (about 87 percent the speed of light)...........
To Read More...
The “Stupid Party” Strikes again with a Disheartening Deal to Avoid a Government Shutdown
May 2, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House.
In theory, that means a long-overdue opportunity to eliminate wasteful programs and cut pork-barrel spending.
In reality, it mostly means business as usual.
Politicians in Washington just reached a deal to fund the government for the rest of the current fiscal year. As reported by the Washington Post, it’s not exactly a victory for libertarians or small-government conservatives.
I’m disappointed, as you might expect. But as I say in this interview, there are far more important battles. I’ll gladly accept a bit of pork and profligacy in the 2017 budget if that clears the decks for much-needed repeal of Obamacare and long-overdue reform of the tax code.
But here’s the catch. I don’t expect that these reforms will actually happen. Yes, the deck has been cleared, but I don’t think Republicans will take advantage of the opportunity.
The fundamental problem, which I pointed out in a different interview, is that there’s not a governing majority for smaller government. And that has some very grim implications.
Even more depressing, I point out that only Trump has the power to turn things around. Yet I see very little evidence that he, a) believes in smaller government, or b) is willing to expend any political capital to achieve smaller government.
To make matters worse, Republicans have convinced themselves that they lose the spin battle whenever there is a shutdown or some other high-stakes fiscal fight with Democrats.
For what it’s worth, I’m trying to remind Republicans that it is in their long-run political interests to do the right thing (as Reagan demonstrated). That’s why, in the first interview, I said they need to gut Obamacare and lower taxes if they want to do well in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for the “stupid party” to behave intelligently.
Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House.
In theory, that means a long-overdue opportunity to eliminate wasteful programs and cut pork-barrel spending.
In reality, it mostly means business as usual.
Politicians in Washington just reached a deal to fund the government for the rest of the current fiscal year. As reported by the Washington Post, it’s not exactly a victory for libertarians or small-government conservatives.
Democrats are surprised by just how many concessions they extracted in the trillion-dollar deal, considering that Republicans have unified control of government. …Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen. The president called for $18 billion in cuts. Instead, he’s going to sign a budget with lots of sweeteners that grow the size of government. …the NIH will get a $2 billion boost — on top of the huge increase it got last year. …Planned Parenthood…will continue to receive funding at current levels. …after the deal was reached…, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi quickly put out celebratory statements. …“Overall, the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one,” Bloomberg reports. …Reuters: “While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored … significant victories in the deal.” …Vox: “Conservatives got almost nothing they wanted.”I guess you could call this a triumph of “public choice” over campaign rhetoric. Politicians did what’s in the best interest of politicians rather than what would be best for the nation.
I’m disappointed, as you might expect. But as I say in this interview, there are far more important battles. I’ll gladly accept a bit of pork and profligacy in the 2017 budget if that clears the decks for much-needed repeal of Obamacare and long-overdue reform of the tax code.
But here’s the catch. I don’t expect that these reforms will actually happen. Yes, the deck has been cleared, but I don’t think Republicans will take advantage of the opportunity.
The fundamental problem, which I pointed out in a different interview, is that there’s not a governing majority for smaller government. And that has some very grim implications.
Even more depressing, I point out that only Trump has the power to turn things around. Yet I see very little evidence that he, a) believes in smaller government, or b) is willing to expend any political capital to achieve smaller government.
To make matters worse, Republicans have convinced themselves that they lose the spin battle whenever there is a shutdown or some other high-stakes fiscal fight with Democrats.For what it’s worth, I’m trying to remind Republicans that it is in their long-run political interests to do the right thing (as Reagan demonstrated). That’s why, in the first interview, I said they need to gut Obamacare and lower taxes if they want to do well in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for the “stupid party” to behave intelligently.
Who Can Count the Dust of Jacob
Posted by Daniel Greenfield 6 Comments Tuesday, May 02, 2017
@ TheSultan Knish Blog
"Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel." Numbers 23:10
The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country.
Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country's own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood of the Maccabees, adorns lapels. And so begins the Yom Hazikaron, Heroes Remembrance Day, the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror-- Israel's Memorial Day.
What is a memorial day in a country that has always known war and where remembrance means adding the toll of one year's dead and wounded to the scales of history. A country where war never ends, where the sirens may pause but never stop, where each generation grows up knowing that they will have to fight or flee. To stand watch or run away. It is not so much the past that is remembered on this day, but the present and the future. The stillness, a breath in the warm air, before setting out to climb the slopes of tomorrow.
Who can count the dust of Jacob. And yet each memorial day we count the dust. The dust that is a fraction of those who have fallen defending the land for thousands of years. Flesh wears out, blood falls to the earth where the red daisies grow, and bone turns to dust. The dust blows across the graves of soldiers and prophets, the tombs of priests hidden behind brush, the caverns where forefathers rest in sacred silence, laid to rest by their sons, who were laid to rest by their own sons, generations burying the past, standing guard over it, being driven away and returning each time.
On Memorial Day, the hands of memory are dipped in the dust raising it to the blue sky. A prayer, a whisper, a dream of peace. And the wind blows the candles out. War follows. And once again blood flows into the dust. A young lieutenant shading his eyes against the sun. An old man resting with his family on the beach. Children climbing into bed in a village on a hilltop. And more bodies are laid to rest in the dust. Until dust they become.
In this land, the Maker of Stars and Dust vowed to Abraham that his children would be as many as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. In their darkest days, they would be as the dust. But there is mercy in the numberless count of the dust. Mercy in not being able to make a full count of the fallen and remaining ignorant of that full measure of woe. Modern technologies permit us terrible estimates. Databanks store the names of millions; digital cemeteries of ghosts. But there is no counting the dust. And when we walk the length and breadth of the land, as the Maker told Abraham to do, it the dust that supports our feet, we walk in the dust of our ancestors.
Some new countries are built to escape from the past, but there is no escaping it in these ancient hills. IDF soldiers patrol over ground once contested by empires, tread over spearheads and the wheels of chariots buried deep in the earth. The Assyrians and the Babylonians came through here in all their glory. Greek and Roman soldiers and mercenaries pitted themselves against the handful of Judeans who came out of the Babylonian exile. The Ottoman and the Arab raged here, and Crusader battering rams and British Enfield rifles still echo in the quiet hills.
Here in the silence of remembrance the present is always the past and the sky hangs like a thin veil fluttering against the future. The believers cast their prayers out of their mouths against the veil. The soldiers cast their lives and their hearts. And still the future flutters above, like the sky near enough to touch, but out of reach. Beneath it, the sky-blue flag, the stripe of the believer's shawls adorned with the interlocked star of the House of David.
Can these bones live, the Lord asks Ezekiel. And generations, after each slaughter, they come again, the descendants of the dead to reclaim the hills of their ancestors. Rising like the red flowers out of the soil. Like the bones out of the earth. They come up as slaves out of Egypt and out of the captivity of empires, their tongues as numberless as the earth. Here they come again to set up kingdoms and nations. And there in shadows on the dust, a handful of men fight off a legion; swords, spears and rifles in hand they face down impossible odds. They fight and die, but they go on.
The calendar itself is a memorial. Israel's Memorial Day, Independence Day and Lag BaOmer; the commemoration of the original Yom Yerushalayim, the brief liberation of Jerusalem from the Romans, still covertly remembered in bonfires and bows shot into the air, all in a season that begins with Passover, the exodus that set over a million people off on a forty-year journey to return to the homeland of their forefathers.
The battles today are new, but they are also very old. The weapons are new, but the struggle is the same. Who will remain and who will be swept away. Some 3,000 years ago, Judge Jephthah and the King of Ammon were exchanging messages not too different from those being passed around as diplomatic communiques today. The King of Ammon demanding land for peace and the Judge laying out the Israeli case for the land in a message that the enemy would hardly trouble to read before going to war.
Take a stray path in these hills and you may find a grinning terrorist with a knife, or the young David pitting his slingshot against a lion or bear. This way the Maccabees rush ahead against the armies of a slave empire and this way a helicopter passes low overhead on the way to Gaza. Time is a fluid thing here. And what you remember; you shall find.
The soldier is not so sacred as he once was. The journalist and the judge have taken his place. The actors sneer from their theaters. The politicians gobble their free food and babble of peace. Musicians sing shrilly of flowers in gun barrels and doves everywhere. But the soldier still stands where he must. The borders have shrunk. The old victories have been exchanged for diplomatic defeats. From the old strongholds come missiles and rockets. And children hide in bomb shelters waiting for the worst to pass. This is the doing of the journalist and the judge, the politician and the actor, the lions of literature who send autographed copies of their books to imprisoned terrorists and the grandchildren of great men who hire themselves on in service to the enemy.
The man who serves is still sacred, but the temple of duty is desecrated more and more each year. Leftist academics dismiss the heroes of the past as myths or murderers. Their wives dress in black and harass soldiers at checkpoints, their children wrap their faces in Keffiyas and throw stones at them. Draft dodging, once a black mark of shame, has become a mark of pride among the left. Some boast about how easy it is, others enlist only to then refuse to serve. They call themselves Refusniks , accepting the Soviet view of Israel as an illegitimate warmongering state, but laying claim to the name of the Zionists who fought to escape the Soviet Union.
Some are only afraid, but some are filled with hate. They have looked into a twisted mirror and drunk of the poisoned wine. They have found their Inner Cain and go now to slay their brothers with words.
How shall I curse whom G-d has not cursed, asks Balaam. But the King of Moab is determined to have his curses anyway. And today it is to the UN that they come for curses. The Arab lands boil with blood, but resolution after resolution follows damning Israel. China squats on the mountains of Tibet, Russian government thugs throw dissidents out of windows and Saudi firefighters push girls back into a burning building. And still the resolutions come like curses.
In a land built on memory, it is possible not to remember, but it is impossible to entirely forget. A war of memories comes. A war for the dust. Is this a day of remembrance or a day of shame. Were those men who fought and died for Judea and Samaria, for the Golan and Jerusalem, for every square inch of land when the armies of Arab dictators came to push them into the sea, heroes or villains. Were Nasser, Hussein, Saddam, Arafat, Gaddafi, Assad and the House of Saud the real heroes all along. The tiny minority of 360 million pitted against the overwhelming majority of 6 million.
Yet though men may forget, the dust remembers. And the men return to it. For some four thousand years they have done it. And they shall do it again. For He who has made men of the dust and made worlds of the dust of stars does not forget. As the stars turn in whirling galaxies and the dust flies across the land, so the people return to the land. And though they forget, they remember again. For the dust is the memory of ages and the children shall always return to the dust of their ancestors.
In the cities, towns and villages -- the dead are remembered. Those who died with weapons in their hands and those who just died. Men, women and children. Drops of blood cast to the dust, reborn as flowers on lapels. Reborn as memory.
All go to one place, said King Solomon, all that lives is of the dust, and all returns to the dust. There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his works. And so memorial day precedes the day of independence. That we rejoice in that which those who sleep in the dust have died to protect. The skyscrapers and the orchards, the sheep ranches and the highways, the schools and the synagogues. For they who drained the swamps and built the roads, who held guard over the air and built the cities, may not have lived to see their works. But we rejoice in their works for them. And a new generation rises to watch over their dust and tend the works that they have built. Until the day when He that counts the dust of Jacob shall count them all, and the land shall stir, and in the words of Daniel, they that sleep in dust shall arise, and then rejoice with us.
"Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel." Numbers 23:10
The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country.
Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country's own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood of the Maccabees, adorns lapels. And so begins the Yom Hazikaron, Heroes Remembrance Day, the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror-- Israel's Memorial Day.
Who can count the dust of Jacob. And yet each memorial day we count the dust. The dust that is a fraction of those who have fallen defending the land for thousands of years. Flesh wears out, blood falls to the earth where the red daisies grow, and bone turns to dust. The dust blows across the graves of soldiers and prophets, the tombs of priests hidden behind brush, the caverns where forefathers rest in sacred silence, laid to rest by their sons, who were laid to rest by their own sons, generations burying the past, standing guard over it, being driven away and returning each time.
On Memorial Day, the hands of memory are dipped in the dust raising it to the blue sky. A prayer, a whisper, a dream of peace. And the wind blows the candles out. War follows. And once again blood flows into the dust. A young lieutenant shading his eyes against the sun. An old man resting with his family on the beach. Children climbing into bed in a village on a hilltop. And more bodies are laid to rest in the dust. Until dust they become.
In this land, the Maker of Stars and Dust vowed to Abraham that his children would be as many as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. In their darkest days, they would be as the dust. But there is mercy in the numberless count of the dust. Mercy in not being able to make a full count of the fallen and remaining ignorant of that full measure of woe. Modern technologies permit us terrible estimates. Databanks store the names of millions; digital cemeteries of ghosts. But there is no counting the dust. And when we walk the length and breadth of the land, as the Maker told Abraham to do, it the dust that supports our feet, we walk in the dust of our ancestors.
Some new countries are built to escape from the past, but there is no escaping it in these ancient hills. IDF soldiers patrol over ground once contested by empires, tread over spearheads and the wheels of chariots buried deep in the earth. The Assyrians and the Babylonians came through here in all their glory. Greek and Roman soldiers and mercenaries pitted themselves against the handful of Judeans who came out of the Babylonian exile. The Ottoman and the Arab raged here, and Crusader battering rams and British Enfield rifles still echo in the quiet hills.
Here in the silence of remembrance the present is always the past and the sky hangs like a thin veil fluttering against the future. The believers cast their prayers out of their mouths against the veil. The soldiers cast their lives and their hearts. And still the future flutters above, like the sky near enough to touch, but out of reach. Beneath it, the sky-blue flag, the stripe of the believer's shawls adorned with the interlocked star of the House of David.
Can these bones live, the Lord asks Ezekiel. And generations, after each slaughter, they come again, the descendants of the dead to reclaim the hills of their ancestors. Rising like the red flowers out of the soil. Like the bones out of the earth. They come up as slaves out of Egypt and out of the captivity of empires, their tongues as numberless as the earth. Here they come again to set up kingdoms and nations. And there in shadows on the dust, a handful of men fight off a legion; swords, spears and rifles in hand they face down impossible odds. They fight and die, but they go on.
The calendar itself is a memorial. Israel's Memorial Day, Independence Day and Lag BaOmer; the commemoration of the original Yom Yerushalayim, the brief liberation of Jerusalem from the Romans, still covertly remembered in bonfires and bows shot into the air, all in a season that begins with Passover, the exodus that set over a million people off on a forty-year journey to return to the homeland of their forefathers.
The battles today are new, but they are also very old. The weapons are new, but the struggle is the same. Who will remain and who will be swept away. Some 3,000 years ago, Judge Jephthah and the King of Ammon were exchanging messages not too different from those being passed around as diplomatic communiques today. The King of Ammon demanding land for peace and the Judge laying out the Israeli case for the land in a message that the enemy would hardly trouble to read before going to war.Take a stray path in these hills and you may find a grinning terrorist with a knife, or the young David pitting his slingshot against a lion or bear. This way the Maccabees rush ahead against the armies of a slave empire and this way a helicopter passes low overhead on the way to Gaza. Time is a fluid thing here. And what you remember; you shall find.
The soldier is not so sacred as he once was. The journalist and the judge have taken his place. The actors sneer from their theaters. The politicians gobble their free food and babble of peace. Musicians sing shrilly of flowers in gun barrels and doves everywhere. But the soldier still stands where he must. The borders have shrunk. The old victories have been exchanged for diplomatic defeats. From the old strongholds come missiles and rockets. And children hide in bomb shelters waiting for the worst to pass. This is the doing of the journalist and the judge, the politician and the actor, the lions of literature who send autographed copies of their books to imprisoned terrorists and the grandchildren of great men who hire themselves on in service to the enemy.
The man who serves is still sacred, but the temple of duty is desecrated more and more each year. Leftist academics dismiss the heroes of the past as myths or murderers. Their wives dress in black and harass soldiers at checkpoints, their children wrap their faces in Keffiyas and throw stones at them. Draft dodging, once a black mark of shame, has become a mark of pride among the left. Some boast about how easy it is, others enlist only to then refuse to serve. They call themselves Refusniks , accepting the Soviet view of Israel as an illegitimate warmongering state, but laying claim to the name of the Zionists who fought to escape the Soviet Union.
Some are only afraid, but some are filled with hate. They have looked into a twisted mirror and drunk of the poisoned wine. They have found their Inner Cain and go now to slay their brothers with words.
How shall I curse whom G-d has not cursed, asks Balaam. But the King of Moab is determined to have his curses anyway. And today it is to the UN that they come for curses. The Arab lands boil with blood, but resolution after resolution follows damning Israel. China squats on the mountains of Tibet, Russian government thugs throw dissidents out of windows and Saudi firefighters push girls back into a burning building. And still the resolutions come like curses.
In a land built on memory, it is possible not to remember, but it is impossible to entirely forget. A war of memories comes. A war for the dust. Is this a day of remembrance or a day of shame. Were those men who fought and died for Judea and Samaria, for the Golan and Jerusalem, for every square inch of land when the armies of Arab dictators came to push them into the sea, heroes or villains. Were Nasser, Hussein, Saddam, Arafat, Gaddafi, Assad and the House of Saud the real heroes all along. The tiny minority of 360 million pitted against the overwhelming majority of 6 million.
In the cities, towns and villages -- the dead are remembered. Those who died with weapons in their hands and those who just died. Men, women and children. Drops of blood cast to the dust, reborn as flowers on lapels. Reborn as memory.
All go to one place, said King Solomon, all that lives is of the dust, and all returns to the dust. There is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his works. And so memorial day precedes the day of independence. That we rejoice in that which those who sleep in the dust have died to protect. The skyscrapers and the orchards, the sheep ranches and the highways, the schools and the synagogues. For they who drained the swamps and built the roads, who held guard over the air and built the cities, may not have lived to see their works. But we rejoice in their works for them. And a new generation rises to watch over their dust and tend the works that they have built. Until the day when He that counts the dust of Jacob shall count them all, and the land shall stir, and in the words of Daniel, they that sleep in dust shall arise, and then rejoice with us.
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